Designing the Future: Leadership and AI

This chapter explores the evolving, reciprocal relationship between leadership and augmented/artificial intelligence (AI) across individual, team, organizational, and societal levels. While we use the term AI throughout in recognition of its widespread usage, we acknowledge the growing preference for augmented intelligence – a framing advanced by leaders in human–machine teaming, such as Paul G. Kaminski (2020), which emphasizes cognitive extension and human–AI partnership. Just as leadership helped shape – and was reshaped by – the Agricultural, Industrial, and Information Ages, the emerging Age of AI demands a renewed focus on human values and moral courage. Far from a neutral tool, AI reflects the intentions of its designers and the integrity of its leaders, and in turn, transforms how we work, relate, and lead. Grounded in authentic and moral leadership theory, systems thinking, and sociotechnical design, we examine how leaders can engage AI in ways that safeguard human dignity, foster trust, and advance ethical innovation. Through a multilevel lens, we explore how AI influences self-awareness, interpersonal responsibility, team dynamics, and global leadership strategies. We extend prior work on efficacy-performance spirals to the AI context, showing how trust, learning, and adaptation can reinforce or erode across levels over time. Drawing on work published in Organizational Dynamics, this chapter also applies the TRUST, COACH, and CARES frameworks to AI leadership. As AI reshapes decision-making and connection, the defining force will not be technology itself, but the authenticity, trustworthiness, and moral imagination of those who lead it.